Read "The Making of a Novelist" by David Christie Murray online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It is probable that there never was in the history of the world a city so crammed with every sample of the tribes of rascaldom as Constantinople at this epoch. I saw, from the carriage gateway at the Hotel de Byzance, three coffee-coloured scoundrels pause at the place of custom held by an itinerant moneychanger. The man sat with his little glazed box of Turkish and foreign coins before him on the pavement, his whole financial stock-in-trade amounting to perhaps twenty or thirty pounds. One of the passing rascals offered for his inspection a diminutive gold coin, and the grey-bearded, venerable-looking money-merchant, having examined it, opened his case and took out a handful of coins to give change for it. The glass lid was no sooner lifted, than each one of the trio dipped in a coffee-coloured paw and took out a handful of money. The man who had shown the small gold coin pouched it again and walked on.
The poor old money-changer rose to his feet and made a motion as if he would follow; but one of the ruffians half drew the sword which hung at his side, and turned upon him with a sudden snarl. The old man sat down to his loss, and made no further attempt to recover his stolen belongings.